The poet Thomson speaks of "the redbreast sacred to the household gods," and Gray, in a stanza which, since the edition of 1753, has been omitted from the Elegy, wrote:—
"There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen are frequent violets found;
The robin loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."
Dr. Robert Fletcher (447) has shown to what extent the redbreast figures in early English poetry, and the belief in his pious care for the dead and for children is found in Germany, Brittany, and other parts of the continent of Europe. In England the robin is the children's favourite bird, and rhymes and stories in his honour abound,—most famous is the nursery song, "Who killed Cock Robin?"
A sweet legend of the Greek Church tells us that "Our Lord used to feed the robins round his mother's door, when a boy; moreover, that the robin never left the sepulchre till the Resurrection, and, at the Ascension, joined in the angels' song." The popular imagination, before which the robin appears as "the pious bird with the scarlet breast," found no difficulty in assigning a cause for the colour of its plumage. One legend, current amongst Catholic peoples, has it that "the robin was commissioned by the Deity to carry a drop of water to the souls of unbaptized infants in hell, and its breast was singed in piercing the flames." In his poem The Robin, Whittier has versified the story from a Welsh source. An old Welsh lady thus reproves her grandson, who had tossed a stone at the robin hopping about in the apple-tree:—
"'Nay!' said the grandmother; 'have you not heard,
My poor, bad boy! of the fiery pit,
And how, drop by drop, this merciful bird
Carries the water that quenches it?
"'He brings cool dew in his little bill,
And lets it fall on the souls of sin;
You can see the mark on his red breast still
Of fires that scorch as he drops it in.'"
Another popular story, however, relates that when Christ was on His way to Calvary, toiling beneath the burden of the cross, the robin, in its kindness, plucked a thorn from the crown that oppressed His brow, and the blood of the divine martyr dyed the breast of the bird, which ever since has borne the insignia of its charity. A variant of the same legend makes the thorn wound the bird itself and its own blood dye its breast.
According to a curious legend of the Chippeway Indians, a stern father once made his young son undergo the fasting necessary to obtain a powerful guardian spirit. After bravely holding out for nine days, he appealed to his father to allow him to give up, but the latter would not hear of it, and by the eleventh day the boy lay as one dead. At dawn the next morning, the father came with the promised food. Looking through a hole in the lodge, he saw that his son had painted his breast and shoulders as far as he could reach with his hands. When he went into the lodge, he saw him change into a beautiful bird and fly away. Such was the origin of the first robin-redbreast (440. 210). Whittier, in his poem, How the Robin Came, has turned the tale of the Red Men into song. As the father gazed about him, he saw that on the lodge-top—
"Sat a bird, unknown before,
And, as if with human tongue,
'Mourn me not,' it said, or sung;
'I, a bird, am still your son,
Happier than if hunter fleet,
Or a brave before your feet
Laying scalps in battle won.
Friend of man, my song shall cheer
Lodge and corn-land; hovering near,
To each wigwam I shall bring
Tidings of the coming spring;
Every child my voice shall know
In the moon of melting snow
When the maple's red bud swells,
And the wind-flower lifts its bells.
As their fond companion
Men shall henceforth own your son,
And my song shall testify
That of human kin am I.'"
Stork.